BranchIt

In the lead up to Dreamforce, Salesforce ran a competition with a $100,000 prize for the best new application developed for the Force.com platform. The five finalists were introduced at Dreamforce and the winner was BranchIt, a startup that built an application that adds what it calls a LinkedIn effect to Salesforce’s Chatter.

According to the press release, “BranchIt for Chatter uncovers relationships held by employees across the entire company and feeds them through Salesforce Chatter to users. Specific functionality includes automated contact syncing, relationship discovery, relationship strength scoring, contact following, account following and related management reports. The application makes use of Chatter, Jigsaw, Apex code, Visualforce, various e-mail platform integrations and is accessible via standard web browsers and mobile devices.

According to CEO, Josh Yuster, BranchIt for Chatter will be made available as a free application on the AppExchange from salesforce.com. The offer is valid for unlimited users across any enterprise provided the transaction is complete by Valentine’s Day 2011. Youster also said that the company will invest the prize money into company growth.